Posts tagged: summer food

Though you may associate your Instant Pot with wintry meals like meaty stews, you can also totally use it during the summer. The nice thing about the pressure cooking gadget—aside from the fact that it has a bunch of functions including yogurt-making and slow-cooking—is that you don’t need to turn on the stove or the oven to use it. So you can make anything you want on a hot summer day and you won’t sweat to death—scout’s honor.

That’s not the only reason to keep your Instant Pot handy from June to September. Its pressure cooking function allows it to quickly make things that normally take a long time. So the next time you want fall-off-the-bone tender baby back ribs, you don’t have to work all day for them.

Now that I’ve caught your attention, here are 13 classic summertime recipes to put your Instant Pot to work. They include practically anything you might find yourself craving during the summer, including must-haves like corn on the cob and healthier renditions of favorites like sloppy joes and chicken wings. Plus: Game-changers like Instant Pot peach cobbler and a shrimp boil that only takes six minutes to make.

When it’s really hot out, the last thing I want to do is cook. While stovetop meals and sheet-pan dinners may be great ways to warm up your apartment during the winter, they’re just recipes for sweating during the summer. From June to September, if I’m actually going to convince myself to make dinner rather than ordering out, I need ideas that will fill me up without heating me up.

Most people think of dinnertime as the time when sit down to a warm, hearty meal, but food doesn’t have to be warm or hearty to fill you up. Salads, cold soups, sandwiches, and more don’t need any time over fire or in an oven, but they’ll satisfy your hunger just as well as something that might.

These 17 meatless recipes will help you make it through the summer, because you don’t need to cook them to enjoy them. Since they’re packed with vegetables and non-meat protein sources like tofu, tempeh, and beans, they definitely have all the protein, fiber, and healthy carbs you need. They’re tasty, too, but most importantly, they’re cool—and they definitely won’t turn you into a human puddle.

There are a lot of things to love about summer, but its fresh, seasonal produce might just be what I love most. From tomatoes to corn, a lot of excellent fruits and vegetables reach their peak deliciousness from May through August. I get pumped for all the different ripe picks out there, but every year I always get the most excited for the same things: peaches, plums, and apricots.

These three juicy fruit are all known as stone fruit, because they literally have a stone, or a pit, inside of them. They’re most famously featured in sweets—think peaches and cream, plum tarts, apricot jams—but they’re also great in salads, sautés, grain bowls, sandwiches, and all sorts of different savory meals. And since they’re each an excellent source of vitamin A, C, and K, they’re worth eating more often.

Celebrate this season’s harvest with this mix of 19 apricot, peach, and plum recipes. Ideas like apricot-Dijon glazed salmon, barley porridge with honeyed plums, and plum-ricotta tartines will help you make the most of the stone fruit while it’s still around.